blood orange custard tart with candied blood oranges

No snow. No ice. No hats or scarves or mittens. Other than slightly lower temperatures, there’s not much to let us Central Floridians know that winter is here…except for the appearance of blood oranges at the market. Discovering them is almost as exciting as waking up to a winter wonderland…well, maybe not quite, but I do get a little thrill when I find these gorgeous gems in the produce section.

There are lots of things you can do with blood oranges. This tart is one of my favorites because it uses them in two different ways. A silky blood orange custard fills a sweet tart shell, and it’s topped with glistening candied blood orange slices.

Ingredients:

For the crust

• 1 1/2 cups (195 grams) all-purpose flour

• 1/4 cup (50 grams) granulated white sugar

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 1/2 cup (113 grams) room temperature unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

• 1 large egg

• 1 tsp vanilla bean paste or extract

• ¼ teaspoon ground cardamom

  For the filling

• ⅔ cup sugar

• 2 tablespoons cornstarch

• ¼ teaspoon salt

• ¼ + 1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom

• 1 cup blood orange juice

• 3 large eggs, lightly beaten

• 1 large egg yolk, lightly beaten

• 2 tablespoons blood orange zest

• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

• optional: a few drops orange food color

For the candied orange garnish

• 2 blood oranges sliced thinly, about 1/8”—1/4”, discarding the ends.

• 2 cups white sugar

• 2 cups water

Method:

For the tart shell

• Preheat the oven to 350°F

• Lightly grease a 9” tart pan with a removable bottom.

• If you haven’t got a tart pan, you can use a springform. You’ll just work the pastry with your fingers to create a shell that’s about an inch high up the sides all around…but the fluted effect of a tart pan makes for the prettiest presentation.

• Pulse flour, sugar, and salt in a food processor a few times to combine. Add the cold butter and pulse several more times until mixture is very crumbly and resembles coarse sand. Add the egg and vanilla and pulse briefly to combine.

• Dump out the mixture into the prepared tart pan and press the crumbs together evenly up the sides and along the bottom. Dock the crust (prick the bottom of the crust several times with a fork).
  Then, slide the crust into the freezer for 15 minutes or more.

• Blind bake the crust—Remove the crust from the freezer and place it onto a baking sheet. Line the crust with aluminum foil and fill it with pie weights or dried beans.

•  Bake the crust in the preheated oven until it begins to turn golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes. Then, remove beans and aluminum foil and return it to the oven, continuing to bake it until the center is set, about 5 to 7 minutes more. Remove from the crust from oven and reduce the oven temperature to 325ºF.

For the filling

• The trick to making custard, if you haven’t done it before, is to fool the eggs into cooking without scrambling, which is what they want to do. In order to produce something that is smooth and silky, rather than lumpy and nasty, is to cook it very slowly and gently. And so, the best way to make the filling is over a double boiler. If you don’t have one, it’s easy to cobble one together from a pot and a heat proof bowl. Pyrex is best, but you can use one made of stainless steel. Ideally, the bowl should fit over the rim of the pot without falling in. That way, you won’t have to hold the bowl, which is do-able, but awkward. Fill the pot with just enough water so that the bowl rests just above the water line without touching it. Once you’ve got the water level right, remove the bowl from the pot and bring the pot to a simmer.

• While the water is coming to a simmer, whisk together the sugar, cornstarch, cardamom, and salt in the afore mentioned bowl. Then slowly whisk in the orange juice, a little at a time, making first a smooth paste and then adding the rest of the juice while continuing to whisk. This will help avoid lumps of cornstarch in your filling. Then whisk in the eggs, egg yolk, and orange zest until smooth.

• Place the bowl over your pot of simmering water, again, making sure it does not touch the water. Cook, stirring constantly with a spoon (using a whisk will create unwanted bubbles), until the mixture is just thick enough to coat the back of the spoon, about 5 to 10 minutes. Don’t expect a thick custard at this point.  

• Remove the bowl from the heat and stir in the butter, one small piece at a time, ensuring each piece melts before adding the next.

• In my opinion, the color of the custard at this point was not an appetizing one. I added a few drops of orange paste color and stirred it in, and was then much happier with the way it looked.

• Pour the filling through a fine-mesh sieve into the prepared crust. This will sort out the bits of zest, and any bits of curdled egg, so that your custard is perfectly silky smooth.

• Bake the tart in the preheated oven until the custard is set, 20—30 minutes. Allow the tart to cool to room temperature before removing it from the pan.

  Chill the tart for at least 3 hours before serving.

  For the candied orange garnish

  What you want to achieve are orange slices that are glossy, sweet, and chewy. It helps to have a candy thermometer (it’s a good tool to have in your stash) but you can manage without one. Orange peels can be bitter. In order to remove their bitterness so that they’re pleasant to eat, we’ll pre-boil them.

• Bring a pot of water to boil and have ready a bowl with ice water.

• When the water is boiling, gently put in your orange slices. Boil them for two minutes, then quickly transfer them to the ice bath and discard the water in the pot. Some people like to repeat this process, even for a total of 3X, but I generally find once is enough.

• Wash out the pot you used to remove any trace of bitterness and then put in 2 cups of fresh water and 2 cups of sugar. Heat the mixture, stirring occasionally to help the sugar dissolve. Bring it to a boil and continue boiling until it reaches 225ºF. By waiting to add the orange slices until the sugar water reaches this temperature, you’ll be minimizing the amount of time they spend cooking, which will help keep them from falling apart.

• Gently add in the cooled orange slices, one at a time, and continue boiling the mixture until the temperature reaches about 245º—250º, to the soft ball stage. (At this stage, a bit of the syrup dropped into a glass of cold water will form a ball, but the ball will still be pliable and not hard. If you’ve heated the syrup too far, your orange slices will be crunchy, like hard candy, instead of soft and chewy.)

• Carefully remove the orange slices, using a fork, and lay them out in a single layer on a cooling rack. You might want to set a piece of parchment under the rack to catch any drips of syrup.

   

Artfully arrange the candied orange slices over the top of the tart before serving.